We got this postcard in the mail yesterday:
* ! * EMERGENCY MEETING * ! * |
I’m not going to respond to this card, but if the Albemarle County Republicans call me, I’ll say this:
Pass the word up the food chain to the national party that the little guys are not going to help the Republicans any more until they mend their profligate big-government ways. I like what you guys are doing at the local level, but somehow the message has to get out to the party at large. So this time you’re on your own.
Medicare prescription drugs. Highway bill. Katrina pork feast. Sarbanes-Oxley. No Child Left Behind. Affirmative action upheld. The shameful imposition of steel tariffs.
Pork after pork after pork, and more Big Government to go with it. I won’t be voting for a Democrat any time soon, but the Republicans won’t “run the table” until they stop “filling the trough”.
Update: Bill Quick at Daily Pundit says:
| My advice to the Baron is that he should have replied to that aid request, and told them specifically why he wouldn’t be responding this time around. How else are they going to know? |
9 comments:
Not to mention the Miers nomination.
Its still true that we can depend on the repubs a lot more than the dems to support the war on terror (at least they know which side they're on), but is sure is hard to be enthusiastic about the rest of their program.
However if you really want to change them, they aren't going to change at the national level until change is forced at the local level, by local voters. As somebody points out in the current NR (I'm too lazy to go check), there is no political reward for spending cuts.
not-so-hypothetical 2008 matchup nightmare:
Hillary vs McCain - I really might stay home. Probably not, but it would be painful.
If something should happen to knock Hillary out, my favorite hypothetical matchup is George Allen of Virginia vs Mark Warner of Virginia. Now that would be a race.
of course - it was Ramesh Ponnuru:
"Spendaholics"
NATIONAL REVIEW/OCTOBER 24,2005
"Many conservatives have been warning Republicans that they
are throwing away their reputation as the thrifty party. But this
isn’t much of a threat. There are a lot of voters who would like
lower spending, but there are few voters for whom it is a priority.
Many people are willing to base their votes on getting a tax cut.
Not many people vote in order to get a spending cut.
The politics of pork illustrates the point. Conservatives are now
calling on congressmen to give up pork for their districts to pay for
hurricane relief. Most congressmen get reelected with large
enough margins that they could give up that pork and survive
politically. But there are very few congressional districts where
turning down a new bridge would actually gain a congressman
votes. If that weren’t the case—if there were large numbers of
voters who cared intensely about cutting government spending—
we wouldn’t have the gargantuan federal establishment we do.
That is why Bush did not run as a budget-cutter. Conservatives
can justly claim to be surprised at the magnitude of the change in
federal spending under Bush; but we cannot claim to be surprised
at its direction."
Read it - (you need a subscription)
I think you've got it. Except in the area of national defense, there doesn't seem to be a discernable difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
I don't mean what's in their platforms, I mean what they're actually doing.
The thing is, most of our local guys are already on target. Rob Bell took so much grief in C'ville for his refusal to back down on his promise to cut taxes. WINA really went after him.
There are *some* rewards for cutting pork in Congress. See the post on Virgil Goode's reply to my request on pork cuts. Of course, the blueberry in the red pie -- Charlottesville again -- also loathes Goode for the same fiscal reasons. Virgil got some boos for his vote on the Medicare bill, but he claims it was to head off a worse version.
I agree about the need to organize at the local level, but I think the blogosphere may help that. It is good at listing info and making it easier to ping these people. For example, Alaska has been outed as a major oinker...that is going to have some effect.
Then there's the Club for Growth. BTW, the head dude, Toomey, is going to be at a meeting in Richmond next week. If anyone wants the info, I'll dig it up. The Club for Growth is taking on pork as one of its causes, even agreeing (with you) to start looking at local candidates.
The tipping point may be coming for pork trimming...a little early to say yet.
I want to get rid of pork just as much as the next guy, but at some point you have to accept the inherent flaws built into our democracy. I'd love the rapid get-things-done efficiency of a good-old dictatorship, but getting jailed and beaten for something less than jaywalking isn't my cup of tea. Of course reforming the system is always an option, but when was the last time reform didn't actually contribute to the mess? And at what point will we have so many laws and regulations that the country will literally cease to function because of legal constriction?
Amen Brother!!!
That's why I'll never be a campaigner. Among the CR's here at W & M there's nobody willing to challenge a lot of the problems in the GOP today--most notably, as you pointed out, the huge amounts of pork and the utterance, on Bush's part, of such statements as "...We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move."
Yeah, they've got to move, all right. They've got to move away from the cookie jar of socialistic income tax and towards actually doing something about internal security, guarding the damn borders, etc.
The current state of things gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Money For Nothing." We give money for nothing and get jihad for free.
Baron
In this age of precision guided munitions you could aim a little better.
President Bush has put together a very shaky coalition to get elected. What he has accomplished domestically is what every part of the coalition wants done. Programs that one group or another will sit out on, or even defect to democrats, is sitting on hold. To really put the Republican agenda in action will require at least a 60% plus majority in both the house and senate so that there is a still 50% support after subtracting the defections.
Much of the budget is beyond the effective control of the President. It requires the approval of Congress, which means the Republicans need 60% margin.
There is a big need to target the RINO’s and support the good candidates. However a general increase in conservative’s members in congress is what is needed. A decrease will be a disaster. I will leave it to your far superior powers of persuasion to figure out how to explain that to the local Republican organization.
Slamming the whole Republican organization because 10% or so miss the program is good way to make Ms. Clinton the President.
Hank,
It's the national party that has to get the message somehow. We have to make them feel pain. In order to do that, they may have to lose a few seats.
I support the Club for Growth, which attempts to beat RINO porkers in the primaries. That's one good strategy.
And given the squishiness of the Republicans in Congress, the ones who gave us McCain-Feingold and the restrictions on military interrogations, the ones who interfere with the base-closing process for porky reasons, whoever wins in 2008 may not make much difference. After all, the craven Senate is not going to let a real conservative get on the Supreme Court, or stop the Democrats from filibustering judicial nominees.
I really hate to say it, but it's true. There's no one on the horizon who approaches Bush's reliability on national security issues. After Congress has porked up the budget for another 3 years, and dumped bargeloads of money down the Louisiana black hole, there won't be enough pennies left to scrape together funding for a real national defense policy.
If we make the bastards suffer this year and next, maybe by 2008 they'll have gotten the idea amd changed their ways. Or we may have a new crop of fiscally responsible freshmen in Congress.
I'm not going to be blackmailed by the "It's either us, or Hillary" tactic. My reply: Go ahead, make my day.
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